My CASTLE!!!

Back in this blog entry, a little over a year ago, I was wallowing in sorrow that the house we were building at the time would not be ours due to loan issues. Right then and there, after all the stress I had endured (girls get all sorts of emotions tied to these things), I had Matt PROMISE me that when we did get a house, that it would be a castle.

Well folks, without further ado, MY CASTLE!!!!!

Yes, this beauty will be OURS in just SEVEN days!!!!!!! I can't tell you how ECSTATIC I am to finally, FINALLY have our OWN HOME!!!! It's a brand new spec home, already completed, in a new neighborhood that is closing out sales, just sitting and was waiting for us to find it. Consequently, we were able to get it for a STEAL!! It is not ideally where I would have liked to end up but my desire for a perfect house, a house that I could LOVE, a house that we could stay in for 10 years, trumped that. I can't wait to get in and make it MY own!!!

Here's the floor plan -

• 3666 sq ft
• 4 huge bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
• den downstairs AND a loft upstairs
• walk-in-closets in all the bedrooms
• a sweet corner pantry in the kitchen
• RV gate with great size {dirt} backyard
  

What's not to love??!??!? Thanks babe...... you're my king and I'm your queen! xoxoxo

Lots of catching up!

Keep scrolling down - I just put up four new blog entries in the last two days! Don't faint. There will be more to come in the next few days so check back again!

A Jam Jamboree!!!

Matt has been begging and BEGGING for me to make freezer jam again (haven't made any for the past two years) but I had two delimmas-

#1, where to PUT the jam since we currently aren't in our own home and hence, don't have a lot of freezer space AND
#2, the recipe I had used before calls for a whole lotta corn syrup, which obviously isn't kosher with Blake's corn allergy.

I'd been putting off the whole process, but I had enough of Matt's whining about the *GASP* sugar free jam that I've been buying, so I decided to find some way to make the jam without the corn syrup. Thanks to some helpful friends on my parenting message boards, I used a liquid pectin and there was no need for the corn syrup! I spent a good majority of the day mashing and stirring and mixing and our result was 7 ½ containers of strawberry jam and 2 ½ containers of blueberry jam. Matt was a happy guy!!! And Blake loves that I made blueberry jam, especially for him! :)

By the way, the title is a reference from one of our favorite books (more specifically, one of Blake's favorites), Jamberry by Bruce Degan. It's really cute and you should check it out if you haven't already!

"Hatberry

Shoeberry
In my canoeberry
Under the bridge
And over the dam
Looking for berries
Berries for jam"

Palmer Reunion '08

Every Labor Day weekend, the Palmers head up to Grandma and Grandpa's cabin in Christopher Creek for their annual reunion. We hadn't been since I was pregnant with Brooklyn and Blake, which means our kids had never been! Since the families have all multiplied tremendously, there is little room to actually stay IN the cabin, so several of our generation pitched their tents, including us! :) I wish I had taken a picture of our tent, us in the tent, something, but I was a picture taking slacker this weekend. :( Here's one I swiped from Kristin's blog. ;)
The weather was gorgeous (we even got some rain!) and there were plenty of little cousins for the kids to play with. Lots of catching up was done with aunts, uncles and cousins we hadn't seen for too long. Saturday was filled with family relay races, quad riding and relaxing.

Gma&Gpa PalmerFamily races
Aunt Melissa leads Josh, Emi, Brooklyn and Blake across the finish line
Brooklyn and Lily were pretty inseparable the whole time! Check out their beautiful wigs bought from the exclusive Palmer store!! Riding quads at 22 weeks pregnant over rocky terrain is probably *not* the best idea!! UGH!!
I couldn't walk afterward!!!! Hopefully we don't have a scrambled egg in there now!~~Cute nephews~~
Adam (left) & Baby Jacob (right)

















Sunday before we left, I took Gav on a little nature walk and check out
this monstrosity of a worm we found!!!!!!!

We had a great time and can't wait for next year!!!

Someone need their eyes checked?????

A while back, Kristin and I were shopping at Arizona Mills. In Old Navy, this shirt caught my eye because it was so fitting for my newly graduated eye doctor husband - you know, the Snellen eye chart. It was on clearance for $3, so being the thoughtful wife I am, I bought it for Matt. When it rang up, the description was kinda funny, but I brushed it off, paid, and we left the store. As we were walking away from the store, I told Kristin what it had rung up as and then it clicked. I pulled it out of the shopping bag and we had a good chuckle!!!

Take a look for yourself ------

I must be awfully naive because I totally read it as "Beauty is in the eye of the BEholder." I decided to keep the shirt and see if Derek or Matt would notice. Guess what? NEITHER of them did!! They all read it just like me, BEholder instead of BEERholder. Matt loves his new shirt! ;)

Brooklyn's reaction to the baby news

I can't believe I forgot to include this in the previous post!! Matt reminded me.

So, I had made these cute shirts for the kids to announce to our families that we were having a boy. On the way to dinner, I thought we ought to at least tell the kids that they were getting another brother. The conversation proceeded like this:

Matt: We found out if you guys are going to have a brother or a sister!
Brooklyn: WHAT IS IT?????
Matt: Well, we're going to have another brother!
Brooklyn: (instantly starts bawling) But IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII wanted a siiiiiiiiiiiiisssssssssster!!!!!
Me: I know honey (trying to fight back my own tears), I wanted a sister too, but Heavenly Father decided that we needed another brother.
Brooklyn: Boooooohoooooooohooooooooooooooo!!!!! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!

Brooklyn proceeds to cry uncontrollably for TWENTY MINUTES!!!!! LOL! Poor thing! We tried consoling her, telling her that she will be our little princess, getting to do special girl things with mommy (like going to see Wicked in July - yay!), have her very own girl room, nothing is working. Then Matt starts talking about how we can get a girl dog and Brooklyn can name her. Gee, thanks honey!! *rolleyes*

We finally got her all settled down before we got to Matt's parents, but she was still pretty ticked off that she wasn't getting a sister. By the end of dinner, she was over it, giving my belly kisses, and told me she loves her new baby brother in mommy's tummy. :)